Keith and Ruth joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in August, 1977. Following linguistics training, which included Keith completing an M.A. in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington, they began serving with Wycliffe in Ghana (West Africa) in 1982. Together with another couple, they helped to complete the Chumburung New Testament in 1987. They then went to the Netherlands for three years, where Keith completed a doctorate in African linguistics at the University of Leiden.
Following French study in Quebec, Keith and Ruth began serving in the Republic of Cameroon (Central Africa) in 1993. In Cameroon, Keith worked as a linguistics consultant and Ruth as a hostess. Keith also served as an international linguistics consultant with Wycliffe from 1995-2011. In this capacity, he attended linguistics conferences and led many linguistics workshops for Bible translators in a number of different countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Togo, Nigeria, Chad, and Burkina Faso.
Later, from 2000 to 2010, Keith and Ruth served full time at the Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL), Wycliffe’s training school in Langley, B.C. on the campus of Trinity Western University. At different times during that period, Keith taught linguistics, directed the M.A. in linguistics program, and served as the academic dean. During this time, Ruth worked mainly as a receptionist.
From 2010 to the present, Keith has been working full time as a certified senior linguistics consultant in the organization, providing consultant help internationally in the areas of tone analysis (analyzing how languages use pitch to distinguish meaning) and writing systems development. He also continues to teach part time at CanIL, to supervise master’s theses, to present papers at linguistics conferences, and to write linguistics articles for publication. He has recently completed writing (and has had accepted for publication) a textbook on how to analyze tone languages.
Ruth is currently occupied full time, caring for four young grandchildren who live with them.